The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South, is a major tributary of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in the southern United States of America. The river was named for the red-bed country of its watershed. It is one of several rivers with that name.
"The Mexicans and Indians on the borders of Mexico are in the habit of calling any river, the waters of which have a red appearance, 'Rio Colorado', or Red river", observed R.B. Marcy in 1853. The Red River formed part of the US-Mexico border from the Adams-Onís Treaty (in force 1821) until the Texas Annexation or Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
The Red River is the second-largest river basin in the southern Great Plains. It rises in two branches (forks) in the Texas Panhandle and flows east, where it acts as the border between the states of Texas and Oklahoma. It forms a short border between Texas and Arkansas before entering Arkansas, turning south near Fulton, Arkansas and flowing into Louisiana. The total length of the river is 1,360 miles (2,190 km), with a mean flow of over 57,000 cubic feet per second (1,600 m3/s) at the mouth.
Read more about Red River Of The South: Watershed, Recreation
Famous quotes containing the words red, river and/or south:
“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“There is a river in Macedon, and there is moreover a river in Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ‘tis all one, ‘tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)